Christie’s New York postwar & contemporary sale totals solid $277m

with new record for de Kooning painting

Christie’s sale of postwar and contemporary on Tuesday night in New York turned in a solid $277m (approx. £225m), artnet news reports, which seems to reaffirm a certain confidence in the market. The evening was led by a $66.3m (approx. £53.7m) Willem de Kooning painting (Untitled XXV, 1977), the highest price ever paid for the artist and a major jump from its $40m estimate. Other records were also broken for John Currin, Jean Dubuffet, Giuseppe Gallo, and Jonathan Horowitz.